Execution time frame set for convicted killer

Tom Gardner

Tuesday, March 16, 1999 | 12:05 p.m.

RENO, Nev. -- The man convicted of killing two workers at a Reno U-Haul five years ago was ordered today to die during the week of April 5.

Washoe District Judge Steven Elliott issued the execution warrant for Alvaro Calambro four days after a federal judge has denied a mother's appeal to intervene on behalf of her son.

The exact date and time of the execution will be set by the state prisons director.

Calambro, 25, has said he wants to see his death sentence carried out without further court appeals, but Michael Pescetta, a federal public defender for Lydia Calambro, said he would go forward with an appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

His appeal was rejected on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben, who ruled that while Calambro may have a low IQ, personality disorders and difficulty understanding English, he was still legally competent to decide his own fate.

"Calambro has accepted his sentence. The people of Nevada are entitled to have the sentence carried out," McKibben wrote.

Pescetta argued unsuccessfully that Calambro has been diagnosed as mentally ill repeatedly, and that he believes his death sentence can't be wrong because anything the government says must be true.

He also said Calambro has admitted to a prison psychologist that he made up some things that may have contributed to his receiving the death sentence during initial his penalty hearing.

He said he would present the same arguments if he successfully brings the case before the 9th Circuit.

"It's the same thing we said to Judge McKibben, but that's what an appeal is for - to get the appellate court to look at the record and say 'we agree or we don't agree."'

The killings occurred January 1994 during a $2,400 robbery at the U-Haul business where Calambro's crime partner, Duc Huynh, had just been fired.

Peggy Crawford had a tire iron driven through her skull. Keith Christopher's head was crushed by repeated blows with a large ball-peen hammer.

Huynh also got the death sentence but hanged himself at Ely State Prison.